...A kiss is a matter of delight, of play, of a delicious hide-and-seek, as light as a feather and as solemn as the prayers to which Shakespeare's lovers allude. It hovers like a net to catch all their fluttering feelings: hope, expectation, anxiety, curiosity, relief, abandon. It waits for them teasingly at the end of the sonnet, to bless the miracle of love at first sight. Listening to Romeo and Juliet, one wants to say that above all kissing proves there are more mysterious and wonderful things in the world than are dreamed of by science.

But what's interesting is that this romantic wondrous-ness finds itself enhanced rather than diminished by the formal elements, the scientific structure, of the verse, and that the young lovers themselves seem more than a little aware of it. That repeated s, for example, makes the lines sound like the kissing they describe, especially because the s often combines with a p, not only in the words lips itself, but also palmers, prayers and pilgrims. Each time Romeo or Juliet speaks, he or she repeats at least one key word that the other has just enunciated, as if their fates were becoming laced together through each letter of that word. The final two lines create not only a couplet but a couple: they demonstrate the union and symmetry between the love-birds.